Henry

This is Henry - the reworked version of my traditional bear pattern.  He has a shorter head and smaller muzzle; slimmer arms; smaller feet; and different darting to the his body and legs.  And his short-haired bits are made from a paler shade of mohair than Herbert's.

I have really taken to him - I think he is lovely - particularly the eyes, although they still look a bit startling from some angles.  The only thing I forgot was to adapt the arms so they have paw pads.  

I think I have enough of this mohair to make one more of these though, so maybe the third bear (Houdini) will have paw pads.

And in other news…. my linen has arrived!  I hope to have some crows available soon!

Herbert

Good morning!  Well, I finally got something finished!  I'm not sure whether I like him or not - he does look traditional to me, but he doesn't look the way I wanted him too.  I guess it's strange to see something which is in the style of an old bear but with no sign of ageing.  He looks a little too generic to me.  I had hoped the feet would make him stand out - since they are a bit different - but although they are very sweet, they don't really add much impact.

His price is problematic too.  I guess I have been making bears from my (rapidly diminishing) mohair stash for quite a long time, so when I had to order new mohair for him, I was surprised at how expensive it was.

It is really lovely mohair - incredibly silky, in a beautiful gold colour - so I kind of forgave it the price, but when I come to add everything up (which I rarely do - its far too scary), I've calculated that the materials, in total, cost £31.96.  I think he took about a day to make - although I inefficiently spread that over 2 days - and about 6 days on the pattern, looking at my previous blog posts.

You can see why I don't do this calculation very often(!)

He is not going to be a one-of-a-kind bear (at least, there will be other similar bears) so I don't need to factor all the six days into his price.  

I once read an article by another bear-maker which said that she charged, for her time, the same again as the cost of the materials.  That would put Herbert just under £64.   

That does seem rather steep - particularly in the current climate - so I'm inclined to knock it down a bit.  £54 maybe?

Frustration

There's an awful programme on Apple Mac laptops called Photo Booth, which allows you take photos of yourself.  It is sort of useful for taking very quick (and not particularly good) photos of stuff that you want to show people, but every time I go into the programme, I have this compulsive urge to take a picture of myself - "okay, let's see what I look like this time".  It's ridiculous.

Anyway, I opened the programme this time to show you my new bear design.  Not that you can see much, but it feels like I haven't finished anything for ages, so I wanted to show that I am getting something done!  Unfortunately, although I'm happy enough with the pattern, I've only just got round to thinking about fabric.  Turns out I don't have anything suitable (surprise, surprise!) so I've ordered some mohair and now I've just got to wait.

And nothing's happening with the crows either.  I've found a US company that makes something close to what I want but, having sent me samples, they've now stopped talking to me at all - it's very frustrating!

Charles

This is the strangely-traditional-looking Charles.  It is weird: I always used to be dislike traditional-looking teddy bears, thinking they were unoriginal, but I am starting to appreciate them now (or maybe just going through a very unoriginal phase).

It does, for me, answer the question of what to do with non-standard colours of mohair.  I don't know if you remember, but I made a bear in this colour mohair before.  I always thought the colour looked a little strange - but somehow it looks better on Charles.

Finally, did you know that Charles is made from the same design as Clement, the bear in my last post?  I just made the muzzle a little bit longer.  What do you think?  An improvement?